Hop N Pizza & Grinders
106 W. Main StreetI think I’ve made it pretty clear over the years, when I travel, whether it’s for work or personal, I like to find local places to eat. Every town has a Subway or McDonalds which would make it easy for me, but what’s the fun in that?
A Co-Worker and I recently took the short trip out to Fennville for an afternoon assignment. Neither of us really planned on getting lunch figuring this would be a quick trip and we’d be back in Kalamazoo with time to grab a sandwich, but the assignment took longer than we expected.
We were downtown for quite a while and noticed a bar on the corner of West Main and South Maple Street. I went in and grabbed a to-go menu then headed back to the car. We finished what we had to do in town but before leaving, I wanted to grab a sandwich and the menu I grabbed earlier had a lot of delicious sounding sandwiches.
Hop N Pizza & Grinders is on the west end of downtown on M-89. It’s impossible to miss as you drive through town. Downtown is only a couple of blocks long but they have a lot packed in to it. Hop N is right next to Salt of the Earth and actually shares some of their building.
The restaurant takes up two building spaces connected to each other by a door way on the inside. The main bar area is in part of an old bank. There was a music store there in between the time it was a bank and the time it became a restaurant but you can still seem some remnants of the bank days. The floor is the obvious one. Part of the floor is hardwood while part of it is marble. The marble part was the public area of the bank while the wood was the business side. This part of the restaurant is set up like most pubs in America. There is a large bar on one side of the room and pub tables mixed in to the rest of the space. There’s a pool table near the old front door. The thing that makes this very unbar like is how bright and colorful the place is. This is not a dark, dank drinking hole. There are large windows that let in a lot of light and bright colored walls for that light to reflect off of.
The other side of the restaurant is the part of the business that shares a building with Salt of the Earth. This side is strictly dining room with a variety of booths and four top tables. The floor on this side is some beautiful hardwood flooring. There’s also a great distressed brick wall that contrasts great with the floor.
Speaking of the brick wall, this one screams of small town pride. There are banners from all of the schools in the Southwestern Athletic Conference which Fennville High School plays in.
There is also a small outdoor patio just outside the back door. There’s not a lot of room for a patio, but they’ve done a really good job of making good use of the space they have providing a nice spot outside to enjoy a drink after work.
The menu at Hop N Pizza & Grinders is standard pub fare with a focus on, you guessed it, pizza and grinders. My Co-Worker is from out west and had never heard of a grinder before moving to West Michigan. This is pretty common when we get new employees from out of state.
Pizza is always something that sounds good to me, but there was some sandwiches that sounded tasty too.
I ordered the Cuban grinder. The sandwich is a sub bun with Swiss cheese, pulled pork, ham, spicy pickles, mustard and mayo. I left the mayo off and upgraded my side option to fries from chips. The sandwich is quite large and bursting at the seams with meat. The bun was toasted but it didn’t have the crispy edge bits that I love so much at Mancino’s. The cheese was melted around the bun and the meats had a little bit of a crisp to them. The pickles were a little too thickly cut, but it wasn’t something that distracted from the sandwich.
The fries were super hot when I popped open the Styrofoam container of food on our walk back to the car. The fries were of the out of the bag battered variety. They were really crispy and a delicious start to the meal since I couldn’t eat the sandwich in the car.
My co-worker wasn’t planning on eating but when I ordered a Cuban, he thought that sounded good and he got one too. He called it “insanely delicious” and I would tend to agree. It was a really great tasting sandwich.
The bill for my sandwich was just under $14 which I paid cash for.
Small town pizza places can be the lifeblood of a community like Fennville. Hop N Pizza & Grinders not only has great food but they’re a community gathering spot. Fennville has a couple of great food options but when it comes to the neighborhood bar, there aren’t many options and it’s great to have an option that also has such solid food.
SW Michigan Dining 